Eliot Spitzer's rollicking campaign rollout

A victory could put him on a path overnight to run for mayor in 2017. | AP Photo

“I think the argument is, look what I’ve done,” Spitzer told POLITICO Monday night. “I’m tough enough to stand up and do what needs to be done. And I think the public knows that. I don’t need to make the case on a tabula rasa. I can point to a record.”

How prepared Stringer is for a knife fight — and how ready Spitzer is to deal with questions about his marriage (he insists his wife Silda will campaign with him) and his prostitution scandal — remain to be seen.

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“People remember me looking through the prism as attorney general, as governor and how I left — the good, the bad and the ugly. But I have stood up in front of the public and said I’m seeking a second chance. So we’ll see,” Spitzer said.

But no one would be surprised if Spitzer won. And a victory could put him on a path overnight to run for mayor in 2017, on the expectation that the next mayor will struggle to get escape Mike Bloomberg’s shadow and that Spitzer would have four years of redemption and new accomplishments.

“No one runs for comptroller so he can spend his life in the comptroller’s office,” said Sheinkopf. He added that Weiner may have the most to lose from Spitzer’s arrival: Not only will the former congressman face new competition for headlines, but he’ll brought down to the first rung on the Scandal Recovery Ladder by virtue of being lumped in with Spitzer in news stories.

Already, Spitzer appears to have done the impossible: won at least a bit of respect of Cuomo, a political strategy obsessive — and a man who came back from his own political and personal embarrassments after being forced out of the 2002 governor’s race after a messy public split with his wife, Kerry Kennedy.

“Cuomo himself, despite the continuing hatred that they both have for each other, wasn’t too jazzed up. He was just like, ‘Is he kidding?’” said a person who spoke with the current governor after Spitzer broke the news of his candidacy Sunday night.

Cuomo’s office described this account as a “lie,” but wouldn’t comment on the governor’s reaction. Cuomo knows what a comeback through a lower office — for him, attorney general — looks like. Assessing Spitzer’s promises to ask for forgiveness and talk up harnessing the unused powers of the office, Cuomo, the person said, was “slightly sympathetic.”

“‘If he can do that convincingly, maybe he’s got a shot,’” the person recounted Cuomo as saying.

Spitzer’s going to need more than that and the explosion of free media coverage to win the Democratic nomination — and for all intents and purposes, the race — between now and Sept. 10. He’s running against time — both to get enough signatures to get on the ballot and to make his case to the public if he does.

The New York tabloids have already shown they intend to turn Spitzer’s candidacy into an economic stimulus. And he’s opposed by pretty much the entire political establishment in New York, which had cleared the field in a series of deals for the politically well-connected Stringer.

Stringer, meanwhile, has already signaled he’ll run against Spitzer based on his establishment support and the same kind of good government backing that won him a crucial endorsement from the New York Times for his current job eight years ago.

Stringer was getting immediate Monday help from that very establishment, with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn dismissing Spitzer and Weiner as a pair — demonstrating the two-birds-with-one-stone strategy a number of Democrats are planning to use.

“For me the question with both Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer is what have they been doing to earn this second chance?” she told reporters, suggesting they were feeding their egos instead of showing genuine justification for redemption.

Another potential problem for Spitzer are the deep-pocketed businessmen who he unsuccessfully prosecuted while in the AG’s office. They are staying silent so far, but it’s hard to see that lasting if Spitzer does well in the coming weeks.

The business community clearly prefers Stringer to Spitzer, who has made clear he plans to broaden the comptroller office’s mandate.